


Of Cats and Rabbits

by Lexie



Category: Victorious
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:24:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexie/pseuds/Lexie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of a school day, Jade refuses to be talked down or to be soothed out of the afternoon's fury. Enter: Andre Harris. Somehow.</p><p><i>"Why would I say that I didn't want to talk about it </i>if I wanted to talk about it?<i>" Jade demanded sharply.</i></p><p>
  <i>"I don't -- please don't hurt me," Andre said, cringing.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Cats and Rabbits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melodiousb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodiousb/gifts).



> All of my gratitude to elfwreck for the beta!

"I don't," Jade announced as she flounced into the room (and Andre was pretty sure she would brutally murder him with scissors if she ever knew that he thought that she flounced, so he was gonna go ahead and keep that one on the inside), "want to talk about it." She sat down, hard, in the chair on the other side of his keyboard.

"Okay," Andre said after a minute, and he slipped his headphones back on. Even with the headphones -- and they were _nice_ headphones, the noise-canceling kind -- he could hear her heel furiously tapping. "Are ... you sure you don't want to talk about it?" he finally asked, lifting one side of the headphones off his ear.

"Why would I say that I didn't want to talk about it _if I wanted to talk about it?_ " Jade demanded sharply.

"I don't -- please don't hurt me," Andre said, cringing.

She rolled her eyes, slouching with her arms folded and her expression smoldering. "I just want to _sit_ here," she said, enunciating perfectly, "and be angry. I don't want anyone to try to talk me out of it or," she waved a hand so fast that it was basically a blur of skin and rings and black nail polish, "magically make me less murderous with the power of their presence."

"... Okay," Andre said, cautious. "Is offering you chocolate beverage gonna count as trying to talk you out of it?"

Jade looked like she was actually thinking about it. "No."

"Then here." He reached down and picked up the enormous jug of chocolate beverage that had been resting beside his sneaker while he made the futile attempt to write some good lyrics for his Composition final. He held it out to Jade. "Enjoy some chocolate beverage."

She eyed the jug for several seconds, just long enough that Andre started to lower his arm, thinking that she was just going stare at him until he went away. Then she snarled, "Do you have something against cups?"

"Not ... generally?" Andre managed to _just_ contain his flinch when she got up, but it turned out that she was just walking to the table across the room, picking up two mugs, and stalking out into the hallway. Andre exhaled deeply, sinking back down into his chair -- then yelped and spun around as someone yelled, "Andre!" just behind him.

"Have you seen my bunny?" Cat demanded, hugging her backpack to her chest.

"Have I seen your _what_ now?"

"Cat lost her bunny," Sikowitz said, slow and unhelpful, from the doorway. He widened his eyes at Andre, who wasn't totally sure what Sikowitz was trying to imply, other than that Cat was being kind of weird and maybe there wasn't actually a bunny.

"Her name is Carlotta and she's lost and sad and alone," Cat told him, her eyes huge as she twisted her hands in her backpack straps. She looked really, really upset. _Really_. Like, 'Andre didn't know what he was gonna do if she started crying there in the practice room' upset.

"I, uh, I don't think I've seen Carlotta, Cat," Andre said carefully.

Cat squeaked in distress, spun in a flurry of pink, and zoomed back out the door and down the hall. Andre could hear her calling, "Carlotta? _Carlotta!_ It's okay; you can come home now! I'll forgive your teenage rebellion!"

"I've got this," Sikowitz said, unconvincingly decisive, and then he sauntered after Cat.

An unearthly howl in a familiar voice almost immediately echoed from the other end of the hallway. " _DON'T EVER SPEAK TO ME AGAIN!_ "

Sinjin sprinted past the open door, screaming.

Jade appeared a minute later, two damp mugs in hand. "What did Cat and Sikowitz want?" she asked, as if she _hadn't_ just sent a boy running crying home to his mother.

Andre stared at her. She walked over, picked up the family-sized jug of chocolate beverage, and poured each of them a mug. She put Andre's down with no little amount of force on the flat left speaker of his keyboard, and he hurriedly grabbed for it before it could tip or spill.

She lifted an eyebrow at him. It was both unsettling and a little hot. Andre didn't still feel all the scary feelings for Jade, but he could kind of understand why he'd had that week of crazy-love back in the fall. " _Well?_ " she prompted, sitting back down in her chair and neatly crossing one leg over the other.

"Cat lost her bunny," he said. "Whatever _that_ means."

"She probably dropped an eraser between periods," Jade said dismissively, and then looked surprised when Andre snorted a laugh into his mug.

"Probably," he agreed, though fondly; Cat was totally weird, but great.

"Are you sucking at lyrics again?" Jade asked after a minute, looking at the empty sheet music in front of him and the cables connecting his Pear Pad to the keyboard.

"That was a temporary block," he protested. "My lyrics are hot chiz."

"Uh huh," she said, clearly disbelieving, and she leaned back in her chair and spread her arms wide. "Let's hear it."

" _Fine_ ," Andre said, and he unplugged the headphones and put his chocolate beverage on the floor. He pointed at her; Jade looked bemused, if that was even possible. "It's _on_."

* * *

On the fourth run-through of the newly-named "Bet On It":

1) Andre was forced to admit that Jade _was_ pretty great at writing lyrics, and surprisingly non-psychotic lyrics at that; and  
2) A tiny black fuzzball went pelting across the room as Jade belted her last smug high note.

Andre looked at Jade. She was staring back at him, eyebrows furrowed all the way down. He lifted his headphones off and slowly, carefully, went to get down on his knees and look under the instrument cabinet. Something with a rapidly twitching nose and big red eyes huddled in the corner. "Huh," he said.

" _What?_ " Jade demanded.

"Cat really _does_ have a bunny." He reached under the cabinet and pulled the rabbit out as it skittered at the floor, trying to dig away from him. "It's okay; don't freak out, little dude." He tucked it in close to his body, and it immediately started frantically kicking and trying to bite at his hands. "Ow! Hey! I'm doin' a good deed here!"

"Oh, for--" Jade shoved her headphones down to hang around her neck and crooked two impatient fingers at him. "Here. Give it here. Give it." Andre hesitantly passed her the bunny. Jade put it down in her lap and then did something to the back of its neck that made it immediately go limp.

He recoiled in horror. "Did you just--?!"

"What?" she said, and then he noticed that the bunny was calmly blinking.

"Uh," he coughed, walking back around to the sittin' end of his keyboard. "Nothing; it's nothin'."

Jade looked unconvinced, but glanced down at the rabbit in her arms instead of calling him on it. "It's ... adorable," Jade said, sounding sort of confused but mostly grossed out. "It's disgusting."

"It's a bunny," said Andre, laughing a little bit. "It's _supposed_ to be adorable." She shot him a flat, dubious look, but when he looked over the keyboard, he could see her idly rubbing behind the bunny's ears as he heard someone walk into the room.

"Hey," Beck's voice said from behind him, and when Andre turned around, he found Beck standing there, offering his fist. Andre bumped it.

"'Sup, dude?"

"Not much. I thought you wanted to be angry," Beck said, directing the last part to Jade, who bristled.

"I _am_ angry," she shot back.

"Yeah, you really look it."

Jade glanced down at the bunny in her lap and her mug of chocolate beverage on the floor, then over at Andre and the whole sound system that she was hooked into. She rolled her eyes, yanked the headphones off, and shoved the bunny at Beck.

"Aww, hey little guy," Beck cooed, cuddling the bunny to his chest. "She wasn't really gonna eat you, I promise."

"Oh my God, _Beck_!" Tori cried from the doorway. "You found Carlotta!" She rushed in and took the bunny from Beck, tucking it in closer to her stomach and beaming down at it.

"Actually--" Beck started.

"You heard the lady," Jade said, standing up and grabbing her bag, and then she went into that weird guttural drawl that she did whenever she imitated Tori. "You're the _hero_! Can I have your autograph?" She fluttered her eyelashes at Beck.

"Hey, _hey_! I don't talk like that!" Tori insisted vehemently. "I've never talked like that!"

"Maybe," Beck said warmly, ignoring everything else that was going on and looking right down at Jade, and Andre saw the moment when she twitched and almost smiled.

"Ooh, let's go feel your tiny-bunny-carrying _muscles_!" Jade drawled, spitting the last word right in Tori's face as she walked past, hauling a grinning Beck along by the arm.

Tori leaned out the doorway and hollered, " _I've never talked like that!_ " after them. She looked back at Andre and her shoulders drooped. "I've never talked like that," she said plaintively.

"I know," Andre said, patting her shoulder comfortingly. "C'mon, let's get Carlotta back to where she belongs before Cat has a breakdown."

"I think it's a little late for that," Tori pointed out, even as a distant voice shouted, "Carlotta! Here, girl!"

In the parking lot, as they passed a twitchy Carlotta into Cat's overjoyed loving arms ("Well, _that_ was hare-brained!" she laughs. "Ha ha, ha ha, ha!"), Andre spotted a familiar truck parked in the back. Jade was yelling, her voice audible from here, even if the words weren't; Beck seemed to be leaning against the truck bed and waiting her out.

While Cat reunited with Carlotta the rabbit, Tori pressed against Andre's shoulder and peered across the parking lot. "They are _so_ weird," she said, shaking her head as Jade gave a particularly vehement sweep of her hand and then Beck kissed her.

"Yeah," Andre said, a little wistfully. On the other end of the lot, Jade shoved Beck back, then they started making out again.

Tori's head whipped back to look at Andre. "Oh no," she said, voice full of dread. " _No_. Not again."

"What?" Andre asked.

"I'm not letting you do this to yourself," she told him. " _Or_ to me. I am _not_ dressing up like Jade and yelling mean things at you again. I'm an amazing friend, but I'm not _that_ amazing."

"Her hair's all blue," Andre said dreamily, and Tori dragged him out of the parking lot with an iron grip on his arm.


End file.
